It was no surprise then that MTV’s Live Story was popular. The whole arrangement was virtually guaranteed to be successful. It was instead the scale of its popularity that amazed. While the VMAs pulled in around 9.8 million TV viewers, its accompanying Live Story on Snapchat reached an incredible 12 million.

This was an important moment that stuck two-fingers up to Twitter. For a long time, 10-year-old Twitter had been scrambling to become our favorite Second Screen through which we respond to our first screen. While Twitter’s back was turned though, 5-year-old Snapchat saw a meteoric rise in popularity. This led to the platform starting to become the favorite first screen for millions of users. People were choosing to watch the VMAs on Snapchat instead of on TV. Something that undeniably took Twitter by surprise.

With Snapchat’s relentless rise in popularity, what we’re seeing is not just Twitter becoming irrelevant for a growing portion of mobile users (mostly Millennials). We’re also seeing Snapchat directly competing with Twitter’s vision to become our first port of call for live events, live news, and live discussion of those events and news. What’s more, Snapchat looks like it could actually turn a profit.

The numbers can’t tell the whole story, but what we can see is that Twitter’s growth has stalled. Snapchat’s is ploughing on. The engagement on Snapchat looks to be far more loyal and intense than on Twitter. Snapchat is valued at twice the price of Twitter, and is growing faster than Facebook ever did. And it’s only just started experimenting with monetization.

Why is Twitter Struggling?

To boil this down to a sentence: Twitter has never been able to change, nor take advantage of opportunity.

Just a few years ago, Twitter thought it, and its 140-character limit, was irreplaceable. It was the place where news on events like the Boston Bombing and the Arab Spring was first broke. It’s where citizens and journalists could share news faster than the news publications could ever dream of.

In the past 24 hours we have had people in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania set themselves alight in echo of Tunisian protest.

Neglecting Video

It seems like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is simply harking back to these good old days when he says:

I want to make sure that Twitter is the place that you check first thing to start your day. It will tell you exactly what’s happening in the world.

Dorsey had a huge opportunity to push this vision. When Twitter launched its livestreaming app Periscope last year, this could have been the perfect tool to help its aspiring citizen journalists. But Periscope just sank into the background.

Twitter also neglected Vine, a looping-video app purchased in 2012 when Snapchat was still a baby. Both Vine and Periscope could have been Twitter’s answer to attracting Millennials: that video-obsessed generation that Twitter has consistently failed to woo.

Failing to Evolve

While Twitter’s overwhelmingly text-based platform was being outshone by its video-focused rivals, it also catastrophically failed to make any meaningful changes to its few features in order to improve user experience.

The features available on Twitter now are pretty much what we were available 10 years ago. All the negative things that come with scale are thrown into the package, too.

Not Enough Truth

As more people started using Twitter to find breaking stories, more tools were needed to prove the veracity of those tweets. Just this month, Sky Sports was caught “reeling off fake facts [from Twitter] about Celtic’s Champions League victors Lincoln Red Imps.”

Granted, the onus is on journalists to fact-check, but the more Twitter became home to “fake news” and “fake facts”, the less people trusted the platform. After all, it’s much easier to trust a hard-to-fake video on Facebook Live (or Snapchat), than an easy-to-fake tweet.

A Cesspool of Trolls

Twitter also failed to act on the growing cesspool of trolling that the platform has become known for. In February 2016, one of Twitter’s most beloved power-users, Stephen Fry, quit the service. His open break-up letter puts it better than I ever could:

Oh goodness, what fun twitter was in the early days…We chattered and laughed and put the world to rights and shared thoughts sacred, silly and profane. But now the pool is stagnant. It is frothy with scum, clogged with weeds and littered with broken glass.

With Twitter, for me at least, the tipping point has been reached and the pollution of the service is now just too much.

Despite banning revenge porn, issuing anti-harassment rules, and setting up a trust and safety council, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo still thinks “we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls”. Users are still receiving death threats and rape threats. Yet on a platform that’s open to anonymous users, and to the wider public, Twitter fails to act forcefully enough to protect its users.

I feel so sad about Stephen Fry’s comments. there’s a lot I’d like to discuss but I don’t think Twitter is the right place. :-(((

Yet despite its difficulty to grasp at first, Snapchat is getting a lot right.

The Attention Economy

The value of social media is largely based on the amount of attention a social platform can extract from its fans. Facebook’s pretty good at this. Twitter is terrible. Meanwhile, Snapchat is incredible. This is largely due to the structure of how Snapchat works.

Each snap posted to Snapchat has a lifespan of only 24 hours. After that, it’s deleted. This introduces a sense of urgency, and compels users to addictively check Snapchat to ensure they don’t miss any worthwhile snaps. (Perhaps Twitter should introduce self-destructing tweets?)

This transient nature of snaps permits Snapchat users to be more authentic. To think less about what they’ll look like. To show a #nofilter life.

More Curation of Content

To combat the feeling of drowning in tweets, Twitter half-heartedly launched Moments. This is a space of popular, curated tweets showing todays news stories from various angles. In theory, it was a good move, but in reality, it was a flop.

Snapchat, on the other hand, has turned curating content into one of the main focuses of its business.

Snapchat’s employees in its Venice, California, headquarters and its New York City offices curate and release Stories every single day—covering sports matches, music festivals, and world events, as well as creating travelogues. (Fast Company)

Snapchat doesn’t just curate individual stories, though. Within the app’s “Discover” tab, Snapchat has curated a team of publishers, each publishing their own Millennial-centric, exclusive content, onto Snapchat. We’re talking companies like Cosmo, Buzzfeed, Esquire, and Vice. If the content they’re producing doesn’t resonate with Snapchat’s audience, they’re fired.

All of this adds up to create a platform which doesn’t drown the user with too many irrelevant updates. There are just a few, quality channels to choose from, plus a few Snapchat accounts of your own choosing. It’s hard to become overwhelmed with this setup.

Owning Live Events

Twitter still believes a large chunk of its future lies in live events, but its expansion into that industry has been far too slow. Facebook is making that move, too. And so is Snapchat.

The one thing that will dictate which of these platforms wins the live events space contest will be which platform corporations will choose to promote their live events on. With Twitter’s dismally low level of interaction and click-through rates, it’s unlikely to come out on top.

This takes us back to the story of Snapchat’s success at last year’s VMAs. Neither Facebook, nor Twitter has seen success like this. Not only did 12 million people tune into that live Snapchat story, but MTVs Snapchat account received over 25 million views, too.

According to Snapchat, more people already watch college football on Snapchat, than on TV. A large chunk of this success is thanks to Snapchat’s Our Story feature…

Which lets users attending specific live events submit pictures and videos through the app to a curated collection or Story. Those collections are made available to all Snapchat users, regardless of their location at a given moment or who they follow, in near real-time.

The nearest thing Twitter has to compete with this is hashtags. Tsk.

Is Twitter Facing an Existential Crisis?

Twitter’s dream of being the center of citizen journalism is being dashed by Facebook, and it’s dream of owning live events is being stifled by Snapchat.

That’s not to say Twitter will go bust over it’s competition with Snapchat. Twitter will likely remain as the sluggish horse that it is. The last bastion of small talk between older groups of friends and communities of geeks. A hideout for people who aren’t yet ready for a world reliant on short-form video snaps. An easy way for millions of companies to automatically promote their brands.

Either way, expect an exodus of marketers from Twitter to Snapchat. And expect Snapchat to become more of a cultural influence than you were ever prepared for.

What are your thoughts? Am I being too harsh on Twitter? Will Snapchat fail to be as big as many are predicting? Let us know in the comments!

Well I'm 21, definitely young enough to be in the Snapchat generation, and I don't get it either. Unless you absolutely don't want anyone to be able to see something later, then why not just post on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Honestly, the people from my generation make me sad sometimes.

For the life of me, I have not been able to understand the allure with Snapchat. I consider myself an early-adopter and certainly don't shy away from trying new social apps/platforms. I joined Snapchat years ago. Its defining feature was the ability to send photos that would 'disappear.' It was perfect for sending 'questionable' photos that you'd be less inclined to text. For posting anything else, I don't see what the draw is. Couldn't you post the same innocuous material to an Instagram profile and remove it later if you wanted to? Or Facebook, or Twitter.

At least in my experience, it's not as if people are posting outlandish videos and pictures that are better off fading into the netherspace. They are posting videos of petting their dog or duck-facing on a dance floor. 8 seconds of dog petting. 8 seconds of drunk singing in the back of a car.